Luxury condos are often identified as the culprit in urban gentrification, but could it be that teardowns of single family homes that give way to much larger single family homes is a driver of suburban gentrification?

Call them teardowns, infill, or McMansions, the affluent suburb of Decatur, Georgia is dealing with growing concern about neighborhood character and tree canopy as property owners adopt the trend toward new, large houses in existing neighborhoods.

As cities across the country consider ways to limit teardowns and large home construction in established neighborhoods, Anthony Flint argues that communities should be flattered by "mansionization" and accommodating to this form of smart growth.

In my hometown—and yours, too, I'm sure—a small, one-story house was for sale, and then it was gone. The guy who bought it promptly tore it down and then, because the new house he had designed was too big for the site, let the hole sit there for a year, a broken tooth in the 1950s neighborhood. Of course, the house he built was still too big for the lot, but there it stands, three feet from his seething neighbors: a McMansion.
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